Tag: Reading

We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo

This is a book of two halves. The first half is set in an unnamed African country that bears more than a passing resemblance to Zimbabwe, and the second half is set in the USA. Narrating both halves is Darling,…
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I’m back!

It’s been a great couple of weeks. Total silence really did me some good. I realised how much noise I have in my life, even though I live in quite a peaceful, rural location in Crete. Not talking or communicating…
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What’s the book you turn to?

Do you have a particular book that you turn to when you’re feeling lost or confused? Something that you’ve read or dipped into dozens of times, and that always makes you feel better? For me, that book is the Tao…
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Different kinds of writer

I have a bad habit, sometimes, of generalising about what “writers” are like, mostly based only on my own experience. Last night I got a good reminder that there are many different kinds of writer. I was performing at an…
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A different take on holiday reading

With the newspapers and blogs full of recommendations for books to take with you on your summer holidays, I decided to do something a little different. My suggestion is not to take any books at all – bring some back…
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The Body is a Temple by Luke Bitmead

First of all, I should declare an interest. As regular readers will know, I won the Luke Bitmead Writer’s Bursary in 2008, an award set up in Luke’s memory, and winning that award launched my career as a writer. So…
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How to write a book review

Just saw a nice post on Read.Learn.Write which goes into the methodology of writing book reviews, using my novel On the Holloway Road as a model. I’ve never really thought about a method for writing reviews before – I tend…
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Today I’m at Read.Learn.Write

Yes, I’m back! Fresh from my guest posting debut yesterday on The Undercover Soundtrack, I’m over at Read.Learn.Write today, talking about Why Reading and Writing are Inseparable. In the post, I talk about how I used to read widely but passively,…
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